


we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed

by kaktos



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Gen, Ghoulification, Implied/Referenced Character Death, References to Christianity, not the lone wanderer's tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-29 02:09:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13917138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaktos/pseuds/kaktos
Summary: Her hair starts falling out. It's not the worst thing that's happened to someone in the Capital Wasteland.





	we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed

**Author's Note:**

> i was a piss-poor excuse of a southern kid and never really attended sunday school, so i don't know why i insisted on trying to reference the bible here lmao
> 
> aside from the title, the extent of christian references is the word bible and the act of praying, both of which are canon to fallout 3 lore/the lone wanderer's parents anyway. this is my first (published) work and it's really short, but i hope it's not The Worst Thing You've Read Today!

Her hair starts falling out.

She lays all her guns out on her bed in Megaton. Counts them: one, two, three, a fourth one so broken is hardly qualifies as a weapon anymore. Counts them again. Anything to distract her.

Hair isn't anything to cry about, she knows. She's killed people, she's watched people die--her own father died in front of her, too. Losing some hair is nothing compared to that.

No one in post-Great War America can be vain, not even Vault Kids, who grew up wearing matching suits and whose stash of makeup ran out roughly a hundred years ago. Certainly no one in the Capital Wasteland can bother to be vain; prejudiced, yes, like the citizens of Tenpenny who believe themselves to be the last remnant of old society (despite turning away anyone who is, very literally, a remnant of the old world).

Maybe that's what she's scared of. The reactions. Even Megaton doesn't take too kindly to ghouls. Gob is both an exception and an example.

She counts her guns again (one, two, three--three and a half) and then she starts to pull out her knives. Over half of them are dull or chipped. 

Charon knows. She knows he knows. He did this, once. Centuries ago--she wonders if he remembers any of the transformation process. She wonders if he'd tell her. Still, her condition is painfully obvious to the average Wastelander and definitely more so to a ghoul. 

The counting helps, it keeps her grounded. If she thinks about it, she'll cry. Or do something stupid. Both. She counts over and over again--one, two, three, a half--knife and knife and knife.

She was a good girl. A good kid. A little smart and a little pretty and a little nice. Mr. Brotch called her a balanced individual. 

(He's probably dead. That's a distracting thought, too, but the wrong kind. The kind that makes everything worse, the kind that eventually leads to thinking about her condition and how it came to be and how home is nowhere and no one at all.)

There are no beautiful ghouls. There aren't even pretty ghouls. Ghouls lack noses and their skin is rough and flakey, both stretched tight across them and falling off. Ghouls are smart, though, clever until their brains start to rot. She'll probably suffer for centuries.

She considers herself semi-religious. Her mother was religious and her dad was, too, when he was grieving. She once found a Bible in Arlington Library and though it was in such poor condition that she had to wrap it in cloth and leather before setting it in her bag, she took it home and read it carefully. Her mother would have loved that--the documentation of faith, the faith itself, the word of God. If only for the sake of her late mother, she found it holy and treated it carefully. It remained on the table beside her bed, lightly read in order to keep the fragile pages from falling out.

The Bible hardly helped her ability to pray, but it gave her something of a line of sight. Still, prayer is an irony in a world where she's shot men in the abandoned ruins of a once beautiful cathedral. She needs it more than ever now. At night, with Charon in the next room over in her little Megaton abode, she lowers herself to her (painfully throbbing) knees and folds her hands. She imagines her mother doing this. She imagines her mother alive and well. She prays.

Death will come for her someday. For now, radiation cradles her, makes her an infant learning their body for the first time. It's something of a blessing, she thinks while she lies in bed. She has all this extra time now, centuries of it. Think of what James could do if he had more time, what Catherine could do if she had more time.

Her hair keeps falling out.


End file.
